Gold Capped: How much can I automate?
by Basil Berntsen 
Sep 8th 2010 at 7:00PM
Today's inbox contained something that got me thinking about the definitions of botting and how weird the economy would be without the rules.
Pat writes:
I am looking at basic auction and mass-mail answering mods. I've just had a problem where I've found a good deal (Saronite Ore often drops below the vendor trash price once you forge it into bars), but it requires a titanic load of time to watch things. Time I could be using for other things, like sleeping at 4:00 a.m. when prices are super-low. Plus, it's a nuisance just to sit around and answer the mail to pick up the items. When you buy 500 stacks, even quick operations take a long time. Are there any tips or mods you could spotlight?
I have tips and mods a-plenty, but I do not ever advocate making purchases while you sleep. The written rule is that this is Blizzard's world, and they can and will kick you out for "economic manipulation" without needing to provide any justification. The unwritten rule (discovered empirically through hundreds of auctioneer interactions with Blizzard CS reps, as well as letters sent to some mod authors who are on the line between just enough and too much automation) is that you can not have more than one batch run per hardware event.
Huh?
OK, that's a little vague. Why is it fine to queue up thousands of glyphs that will automatically price themselves, but not fine to leave an addon running all night that will automatically buy all items below a certain threshold? It seems that the line has been drawn firmly around the number of batches that get done automatically. Very complex batches that take a huge amount of time to finish and automatically decide how many items and what price to post them at are OK, even if it feels like they're doing too much thinking for us. What's clearly not allowed is anything that will initiate batches on a regular basis. So having QA3 automatically fire itself up and do a scan/re-undercut cycle every 20 minutes while you watch a movie without pressing a button is not OK.
Think of it this way: A long time ago, in-game macros were much more sophisticated and programmable than they are now. They could, for example, use abilities based on certain conditions. Why did they get stripped down to their current state? If you can write a program to play the game better than a player, then the only people who would play the game would be programmers or people who could afford to hire them. The decision was made to force people to actually play their characters in combat, no longer relying on an I.W.I.N. button.
Economically, this same thing has happened. When Auctioneer had to get rid of Bottom Feeder, we got a valuable data point in trying to determine what Blizzard considers "too much automation". Bottom Feeder was an addon that would cycle through the AH and automatically purchase things based on lists and price thresholds you gave it -- basically, like the snatch list without needing a scan.
This stuff happens in the real stock market too. There is a type of company called a high-frequency trader. High-frequency traders are allowed to program anything they want into their computers until the stock exchange creates a "one trade per hardware event" rule, so now they've started a creepy arms race to get the most powerful computers as close as possible to the stock market computers and do extremely strange things with money too fast for a human to possibly keep up. They aren't completely invisible to us, though.
Selling still feels easier than buying
On my short list of tasks I'd like to automate is buying. Buying and selling both have the same levels of allowed automation, but buying is not asynchronous. What does that mean? You can list something for sale every two days and make sales, but buying requires you to log in for each purchase. I've complained about this before (asking for a system where we could post want-to-buys, or open orders), and I've written about the best way we can automate buying with something like the snatch list. Unfortunately, this has led to situations where the people who win the buying war are the ones who either bought the mobile AH application or have the time to log in the most often. You can try to compete with them by going around the AH to get farmers, but that's still not going to get you to the place these AH campers can go.
My best advice, Pat, is to stick with the batch tools we already have. They're the only way to play fair and the best bet for avoiding getting caught in a botter ban-wave.
As for your mail
I assume you're already using QA3 and something like Postal. It's possible to set QA3 up to automatically mail certain items to certain characters, which is amazingly helpful when you do all your buying on a single character. Postal can be configured to automatically open all the mail in your inbox; however, your inbox is limited to 50 messages at a time, refreshed once per minute. It's a server limitation, and you even see it on the mobile AH.
My method for dealing with large quantities of mail is twofold: I always start off with the mobile AH because you can simply "collect all" gold. This alone makes the monthly cost for the application worth it, in my experience. Once I have only items (unsold auctions, etc.) left in my mail, I log in for real and use postal to pull them out 50 at a time. You can type /console reloadui into the chat window, and you will get another 50 mails if you finish pulling them out before the 60-second timer on the next batch expires. I always collect mail in a low-population city (like Exodar), and I've modified the LUA code in postal to open mails faster than the default fastest rate, when lag allows for it. I also have an addon profile saved in Addon Control Panel specifically for mail; it loads nothing but QA3 and postal. Since I don't rely on the data provided by BeanCounter in Auctioneer, I don't lose anything by not letting it count my sales and returned auctions. This saves a bundle of addon memory and mail time, as well.
Maximize your profits with more advice from Gold Capped, plus the author's Call to Auction podcast. Do you have questions about selling, reselling and building your financial empire on the auction house? Basil is now taking questions for a special series, "Ask an auctioneer," at basil@wow.com.Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Fluzzarn Sep 8th 2010 7:28PM
Hey Euripides, you can type /reload ui instead of having to put the console in there
but onto my the reason I comment, With the new expansion coming will the gold cap be more achievable with less effort? Level 80 dailes already give around 300g if you do all 25 of them, but what will happen at 85? Will Inflation occur on a large scale or will we still be throwing around 6k gold for the latest BoE armor? I would of emailed this to Gold Capped, but i don't feel like flooding an email with questions
Also to other commenters do you think that you could pass your beta key to another person, say a host on OutDPS,Hunting Party, WHU podcast?
Jesse Sep 8th 2010 7:33PM
Even just "/reload" works.
I'm bothered that I can't automate prospecting/milling/DEing. Why those processes act like any other recipe and I just click 'DE all' or something. *sigh*
I have a single hotkey:
/case Prospect
/use Saronite Ore
and I just click it mindlessly while watching a movie or something. (also one for milling and DEing)
Fluzzarn Sep 8th 2010 7:38PM
if you are using Enchantrix that comes with Auctioneer you can just use:
/click AutoDEPromptYes
and that works for all of the prompts the Enchantrix can create.
Tori Sep 8th 2010 8:37PM
/rl works too :D
vdizzle Sep 8th 2010 9:34PM
My toon on beta is currently sitting with over 400k gold, its seems, atleast for the beta, that the gold cap has been raised. So even if inflation the gold cap will be out of reach of probably everyone(atleast for a while) in cata...
iammurlocftw Sep 8th 2010 11:24PM
OMG free transport! mounts are free now? oh what glorious d- you aren't talking about world of warcraft are you?
iammurlocftw Sep 8th 2010 11:25PM
that comment was before i saw the ad was removed btw
Jorn86 Sep 9th 2010 3:38AM
Everything except /console reloadui only works if you have certain addons. Without them, there's no /rl, /reload, etc.
Basil Berntsen Sep 9th 2010 7:55AM
Fluzzarn, Darkbrew just got his key and doesn't need one any more :)
Basil Berntsen Sep 9th 2010 8:03AM
Also, @vdizzle could you send screenshots to basil@wow.com?
Jamie Sep 9th 2010 2:16PM
You can just type /rl
brett Sep 11th 2010 11:47PM
Ok ive been reading gold capped alot, cuz Ihate being broke. Thing is, what i dont get is how do you buy such huge amount of sumthing, then sell it and get it all to sell, there is bound to be, well no, there WILL be someone there to undercut you when you put the items up. What do I do to still sell the things?
arixian Sep 8th 2010 7:31PM
I have a couple of questions.
One thing I have noticed a lot of on my server is people listing a large quantity of items in single lots with very low bid prices and no buy out. So for example they will list 200 arcane dust as quantity 1 so the first several pages of auctions are taken up by their auctions and they will list them with a bid price of something so low you'd have to give it free to undercut them. Then if you bid on the item within seconds you get an email saying you were outbid for the item and this goes on unitl the lowest bid is most often higher than the actual buyout prices of the other auctions. It seems like the seller is using some sore of bot to automatically outbid you to drive up the price of their own auction but I can't figure out how they do it. So does anyone know how that is done and if it's actually allowed?
My 2nd question is in regards to re-listing auctions. Since I'm new at the process of trying to use the AH to make gold I always list my auctions at the addon recommended price but find that oh I'll say 80% of the time they don't sell so I keep listing them and keep listing them, and I've begun to wonder if the accepted practice is to just keep listing them until they sell at that price, lower the price slightly each time until they sell, or just give up if they haven't sold after x number of tries and vendor it. Any help is appreciated.
Jesse Sep 8th 2010 7:40PM
Your bidding situation is typical of an AH camper. They are immediately notified if they are outbid and often they are sitting at the AH when they are notified. It's also possible it's a bot, but honest (but obnoxious) campers are more common.
I keep relisting, depending on the merchant price of the item in question. Your deposit depends on the vendor valuation. Many items have no vendor price or a very small vendor price compared to the market price. You can relist them indefinitely and never lose a copper (or very little). Other items, like cut gems, can be much more expensive to relist. You need calculate the cost of continuing to post and decide how much you can take.
Fluzzarn Sep 8th 2010 7:41PM
I see the one stack thing a lot of Kel'Thuzad (H) with items such as cloth, but most of the time, when you multiply the price of that single item by 20 (or the biggest you can get with one stack) it is actually worth more than one whole stack, I see it as a scam, So i just ignore it
Drakkenfyre Sep 8th 2010 7:44PM
It might not be a bot.
People often list things on auction sites at extremely low prices to drive bids. Someone will list something on eBay for 1 penny, for example, knowing it will drive bids insane.
Most people will get to bidding, and it will go up quickly. They will lose sight that the bid is now much more than a penny, but they still have that "It was only a penny!" idea in their head. When the bidding is over, it can end up being more expensive than retail.
The people outbidding you on those auctions might be real people. You see a low price, they see a low price. You bid, they snipe, you bid, they snipe. Someone else bids, someone else snipes. At the end, the item is at a much higher price, and the seller might get more than what he wanted for the Buy Out price.
Neirin Sep 8th 2010 7:48PM
The person with the dust may be griefing, trying to screw up auctioneer data, all sorts of things. I doubt they're running any sort of bot to raise their own prices, every goblin and their mother will jump on any deal and raise the price quickly enough.
If your auctions aren't selling because you're being undercut by other people, you're in for some AH pvp (no short answer for this). If your auctions aren't selling even when you're one of the only people in the market, you're either selling too high or you're in the wrong market. Try selling lower and if that doesn't work after a short amount of time, just cut your losses.
Dameblanche Sep 9th 2010 7:03AM
For things I sell in bulk on a regular basis, like glyphs, I do use an addon to set the price, because I have configured QA3 very thoroughly with a specific amount of undercutting.
But with things I sell in infrequently in small quantities, I found that the default recommended prices of Auctioneer are usually ludicrous. I am no totally sure how it works, but it seems that Auctioneer's default settings estimate selling prices on the scans you have done in the past, and that it chooses a price that is a little above the lowest price, to prevent the market from collapsing with items that are too cheap. Again, I am not totally sure if this is the reason, but I am 100% sure that you do have to configure every AH addon very thoroughly to make sure you will sell with a profit and I am also 100% sure that prices on the AH fluctuate so often that you either have to scan the AH at least 2 times a day (which I can't be bothered to do) or that it's more profitable to simply do a search on the item you want to sell and list it manually with the current best price.
To do this quickly with Auctioneer (still assuming you use that) go to the Appraiser tab, click in the left pane on the item you want to sell and click the refresh button on the bottom. Auctioneer will make a quick scan of only that item and you will see a list with the current prices which you can use for your bid and buy out settings. The good bit about it is that Appraiser will remember your last auction prices, so it will also enable you to see if prices suddenly are much lower then yesterday, and if it might be wise to not sell today.
Alexandra Sep 21st 2010 7:44AM
One thing I would recommend to get around those annoying ppl that list 20 pages of 1 item is download auctioneer or my favorite, Auctionlite. When you search in the Auctionlite tab every result is located on one long page that you can scroll down, and from lowest bid, or lowest buyout first. It is then quite easy to scroll past all those annoying auctions of 1 item, or if they have the cheapest buyout, you just need to shift click to highlight all 200 of them and buyout with one click (might be two clicks because you need to confirm) but it is so much faster than buying individual auctions when they are listed like that, and I absolutely love it. I mainly use QA3 to sell my items, and the default AH has added a faster way to sell stacks so the other aspects of auctionlite aren't as needed anymore, but I still have it installed for the buying screen, trust me you will love it.
Gossamer Sep 8th 2010 7:40PM
Thanks Euripides for another helpful article. And I'd be happy to pass on any beta keys I happen to get, but no luck so far.